Open Mic

            Oh, was I ever nervous! That is not a new state for me emotionally. I have angst - plenty of it in fact - but this was different. Plenty of things make me nervous, but being up in front of crowds is not usually one of them. I have no problem giving speeches, and I enjoy acting. My time in pro wrestling taught me to be in front of people, plus how to improvise both words and actions. Yet here I was, in a relatively small room, about to go up on a relatively small staged, and my heart was pounding.

            Months ago I wrote a blog post about stand-up comedy and how much I enjoyed it, and how much respect I had for the people who performed it. For years the idea of giving it a try rattled around in my head. I know how to tell a joke, I have a general understanding of comedic timing (which is absolutely critical), but to go up and do it myself? It just remained another item on my figurative “bucket list.”

            Maybe it was a form of withdraw from being out of wrestling for a year, but a month or so ago I just had the itch to perform again. I’d watch a stand-up comedy video on Netflix and the thought would keep popping through my head. Could I really do this? Would it work?

            I was never arrogant enough to think I could do it as well as the people getting HBO specials or appearing in in front of hundreds in theatres, but then again I also knew I didn’t have to be. They didn’t walk on stage and perform at that level the first time either.

            The more I thought about it, the more I started sounding like I did back in the summer of 2000 when I was considering going to wrestling school. Back then, the one thing I did not want was to be 40-years old sitting around wondering if I could have done it. If I tried and failed, it would have hurt but I would have known. At least I’d have some closure. I realized in November I was getting that same nagging feeling about comedy. That’s when I knew I was going to give it a shot. I might fail spectacularly, but if I did then I could at least go on knowing the answer. As always, the worst regrets come from thinking of things you never did.

            I looked on the web and found a local comedy club that had an open mic night. Every Thursday, anyone who wants can put their name in at the Comedy Caravan and get three minutes. First, I decided to go on a scouting mission. I bought a ticket and sat in the audience. As the comics went through, one after the other, I realized it was a real mix of people who volunteered to go onstage. Some were clearly comedians either starting out or just experimenting with new material. Others were obviously people who were told by their friends they were funny and decided to go on stage and tell those funny stories to others. A few were clearly treating this more like amateur singers treat karaoke night, just wanted to stand on stage and tell a few jokes without any expectation of being particularly good at it. Some simply froze up, fumbled their words or forgot what they were going to say.

            As the night went on, the one thing that kept popping into my head was; well, I wouldn’t be the worst guy up there, anyway. I was not afraid of freezing. I had done enough acting and enough wrestling shows to know I wouldn’t just get up in front of people and blank out. I also knew I could do better than the karaoke comics. I thought I could do better than the “funny friends” guys simply because they didn’t seem to understand some of the comedy fundamentals like setups and ending a story with a big punch line. They also didn’t seem to get that stories about funny things that happen to your friends are often only funny if the listener knows the friend and his/her personality.

            I decided to give it a try the following week.

Throughout the week, I quietly prepared. When I thought of something funny or said something that made a friend laugh, I started writing it down on a notepad or thumbing it into the memo section of my phone rather than letting it fall out of my mind. I also decided I was not going to tell a soul I was going to do this (although I broke down and told my high school friend Rob, who was a safe five-hour drive away). If it turned out to be a total disaster, I decided to one else would ever know.

I also started working on the technicalities, playing with wording and emphasis, trying to find just the right rhythm and timing of a line. I started thinking about jokes more than just saying them. This was all a lot harder than it sounds. I also kept tightening the routine until it clocked in at just over three minutes. I knew the time wasn’t absolutely rigid but I didn’t want to be disrespectful and go way over either.

Thursday came and I drove to the club. I arrived an hour and a half early and walked up to the ticket counter just inside the door. I asked if there was any room on the list and the guy at the desk, who also hosted the open mic show, Bryan Kennison, told me there was. He turned out to be a very nice guy, shaking my hand, thanking me for coming out and writing my name down. As I waited in the bar outside the showroom (the weekend’s featured comic was doing the early Thursday show at that moment), Bryan came by and talked to me a while. He asked me if I had ever been to the Comedy Caravan before. I told him it was my first time.

“First time here or first time ever?” he asked.

“This is my first time doing comedy anywhere,” I said.

“Well, I won’t mention that during the intro,” he said.

Much obliged. He joked about how he had made it in comedy since he was hosting open mic night, with a $1 admission. “Yeah, but you’re twice as good as the guy that hosts the fifty-cent show down the street,” I said.  

I ended up in the ninth slot. I had been pretty calm until I walked in the club, but as I paced around the small bar sipping my beer I felt the nerves coming on. I probably checked the time on my phone every 2-3 minutes until it was time to go in, and I probably did my routine in my head another six or seven times.

When they opened the doors, I found a table off to the side and sat down. Again, most of the people on the list were given three minutes, while others (more established guys I was assuming) were given five. There was a three next to my name of course, so I kept going over the routine in my head. The first eight comics that night went a lot like it had the week I sat in the audience. Some were exactly the same guys, in fact. I tried to stay calm but my pulse was racing. When the eighth comedian went up on stage, Bryan came by my table and whispered that I was next. I nodded and moved over to the side where the comedians came on and off.

Finally, it was my turn. I took a deep breath as Bryan gave me a very nice introduction, especially considering he’d never seen me perform before, and he did not mention I was a rookie.

As I walked toward the stage, I felt all the nerves drain out of me. It was a little like being back at wrestling. Being in front of the crowd calmed me down. I shook Bryan’s hand and took the microphone. The first thing I noticed was with the lights glaring at me from the left, right and front of the stage, I could not see a single person in the audience. I saw nothing but white lights and blackness. That surprised me a bit but I started going through my routine.

Some jokes didn’t do as well as I thought they would, while others got a bigger reaction than I had anticipated. It all seemed to be a blur; my mind was listening for laughs or other audience cues while my mouth was speaking the words I had practiced all week. I realized with some relief that I was actually speaking clearer than I usually did when rehearsing, a product of being up in front of people a lot I suppose. That was not intentional; I just kind of turned that on without realizing I was doing it. The only time I realized how nervous I still felt was when I did a joke that involved looking at my hand as if it were a piece of paper. When I did, I saw my hand shaking. Again, my brain was almost outside of my physical body as I did not feel nerves and seemed to be hearing myself as if someone else were talking and moving.  

My last line got a big laugh, thankfully, and I ended on a strong note. I said “Thank you for listening,” and put the microphone back in the stand. I walked off to applause and was able to walk proudly back to my table. I realized later I had skipped a joke in the middle, but it all came out all right. I hadn’t been the funniest, but I wasn’t the worst either, and I had a couple of lines that got good, solid laughs and reactions.

I sat back at my table while the rest of the show unfolded. I was finally able to relax and laugh a little (I had been so nervous earlier I knew a good joke when I heard one but had no outside reaction to it). I took a few more deep breaths as I took in that true adrenaline rush again. I’d survived, and it even went pretty well. It didn’t take long to realize what comedians got out of the experience. It really was hard. If you fail, you fail alone. But if it goes well, the elation you feel is tremendous. I knew I was hooked, because before I had left the club that night, I had already thought of a few ideas for my next three minutes of material.

I hope it’s funny. 

Blow it Up

            Normally on Saturdays in autumn I’m looking over TV listings and the schedule on ESPN3.com looking for college football games to watch. If you want you can catch games from noon until nearly midnight and beyond. This week I just can’t do it. I just look and shake my head in disgust. Perhaps the straw has indeed broken the camel’s back.  It has nothing to do with what has happened on the field. It’s the bitter taste this sport has left in my mouth so many times. College football is badly broken, and perhaps this week’s scandal at Penn State was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m taking this week off from watching.

I hope I’m not just being dramatic. Then again, maybe that’s exactly what I’m hoping for. Strange way to start a post, huh? I can’t decide, and actually that illustrates my feelings pretty well. I’ve been kicking around my feelings on the whole Penn State sexual abuse scandal for almost a week now. This isn’t going to be another column on who to blame. There have been more columns written on that this week than you can read. Some condemn everything that moves, some even partially defending Joe Paterno (this one by Sally Jenkins is among the best, which is no surprise since just about everything Sally Jenkins writes is top notch). What seems clear is that a formerly well respected program, one that is often held up as an example of what’s “good” about college football, ignored something hideous in its own locker room and young lives were destroyed.

Just over a year ago, Notre Dame student Declan Sullivan was killed while filming football practice in a scissor lift in high winds. Ever since that day the college that has been a part of my life and soul since before I can remember (my father went there, my high school job was there and I cheered for that football team to the point obsessive-compulsive behavior for a while) has steadfastly refused to take any real responsibility for it. The student knew he was in danger (his eerie tweets from that day still send chills down my spine) and yet no one at Notre Dame seems to know who told him to go up there. Was it the coach (Brian Kelly, who has exhibited behavior ranging from “refusal to take responsibility” to “raging asshole” since he arrived)? Was it the athletic department? The school has passed the buck on this as quickly as they’ve passed NBC’s bucks into its bank account.

Around the country news of players being shopped around from college to college by parents, taking bribes from coaches and boosters to play football for one school or another. Don’t worry about classes, those will be taken care of for you, just put on the damn jersey. Eighteen year olds are coming out of high school and are immediately told by the new authority figures in their lives that you have to cheat and lie to get ahead.

Great job, oh ye institutions of higher learning.

It’s simple to say that money is at fault. These schools make tens of millions from their football programs and the easy thing to do is point the finger at the moolah and say it’s made them lose perspective. Except that’s not it. Money is not making them behave this way. It really isn’t.

The problem is the culture that forces them to pretend it’s not about the money.

Let’s get one thing straight. College football has always been about the money. It was in the days of Fielding Yost, Pop Warner and Knute Rockne, and it still is today. Yet colleges aren’t allowed to say that out loud. They have to pretend these programs are not designed to be profit centers for their schools. They have to pretend they are simply there to provide extracurricular activities to the “student/athletes.” Please.

These programs are meant to be money-makers for the universities. Some are better at it than others, such as Texas, whichwas valued by Forbes at $119 million in early 2010, but all of these programs are there to generate revenue and nothing more. They make this money by exploiting the athletes, who technically are not supposed to get a dime. Not for the thousands of jerseys sold with their numbers on them, not for the tickets sold to see them (I have never once paid to see a member of a school’s board of trustees), not for the hundreds of millions in TV contracts handed out by the networks, not even for video games that bear their images and likenesses. People get upset when players take money, but why wouldn’t they? They know what’s going on. They know who is bringing in all this dough and many of them (rightfully) want a cut.

But since this façade of amateurism is held in place by the schools and the laughable institution known as the NCAA, this has to happen under the table. This gives rise to the booster culture that is prevalent at major college programs. Booster is a nice word for “jock sniffer with money.”  These people want to be around athletes and want to feel they are a part of a glamorous team, so they pay their way in with cash and gifts to the players themselves, who then buzz around them (you know, like flies buzz around horse shit, which is the most accurate illustration of a booster-athlete relationship possible).

This also begets phrases such as “preserving the tradition” of the school and doing things “for the good of the program.” Since they are embarrassed to admit teams are profit centers, schools pretend that the teams are a part of the very fabric of their educational institution (in fact many schools keep their athletes completely separate from the traditional students, stashing them in athletic dorms, feeding them in athletics-only dining halls and building multi-million dollar workout/entertainment facilities to keep them occupied during downtime).

There is a simple way to end this lying and cheating, and that’s just be up front about what these programs really are. They are pro teams put out there to bring money to the schools. Just like schools sell anything on which they can print the school’s name and logo in order to make money, schools put out an entertainment product (college football) to make money. Just like the students get paid to work in the bookstores and souvenir shops, students should get paid to put on the entertainment product. Pay the players.

Some say that is not profitable, but I’ll call baloney on that one too. There is an easy way for college football to be a lot more profitable than it is now. It’s a radical move, but one that is long overdue. They should dump the NCAA.

One of the reasons I was happy when schools started bailing out of the Big 12 was I was hoping for college football Armageddon. That was the closest these schools have come to doing it, but they didn’t quite have the guts. The Big 12 should have folded and the member schools should have been dispersed to the SEC, Big Ten and Pac Ten. The ACC and Big East should have merged to compete with the new superconferences, and the domino effect would force just about every independent school or big-name mid-major (Boise State, Army, Navy and BYU or example) to join a superconference as well. They’d each have their own TV network (The success of the Big Ten Network paving the way) and network/cable TV deals (which would be worth a lot more money with more schools involved for each conference). Then, since they had every school anyone would care to really watch, they could tell the NCAA to take a hike, create their own national championship tournament (conference title games as the quarterfinals, with the winners going to a football final four and then a national title game) and sell the rights to FOX or ESPN/ABC for staggering amounts of money. They could keep it all then, skipping the millions of dollars of administrative costs the NCAA wastes. Why share the money with them? The NCAA has shown itself to be incompetent to handle big-time college sports and this way they don’t even have to sweat the other schools that don’t draw crowds.

Then these schools would be free to pay the players some of the money they deserve (even if that means pairing down the rosters, which is fine since 100-plus players on a team is silly enough as it is) and stop pretending they’re something they’re not. The boosters would go from being back-alley corruptive influences to just being rich fans in the luxury boxes since they wouldn’t be needed to make back-door deals anymore.

The consolidation would be good for the sport. It would drop the corrupt bowl system while being profitable for the schools that draw money. Running it more like an NFL-style business would be better for everyone involved, and more honest as well.

I don’t know that it would have saved Declan Sullivan’s life, but perhaps some standardized safety guidelines would have kept him off that lift in a howling wind. I don’t know that it would have kept sexual abuse from going on at Penn State, but perhaps it would put a dent in the “preserve the sacred reputation” culture that swept it under the rug for so long.

These schools say they are there to educate the students. Fine, teach they don’t have to lie and cheat right out of high school. Teach them their hard work has value. Most of all, stop insulting them by pretending you’re doing them a favor by allowing them to play football for the glory of the old alma mater. Those kids have been lining the school’s pockets for decades. They’re the ones doing the favors. 

Hablo Espanol? Si, Kinda Sorta

            For the last few weeks I have been working on my Spanish. I took Spanish in college, when four semesters was required, and I did all right. I enjoyed it for the most part, but I also admit the years have drained most of what I learned from my memory.

            I find I can actually read it fairly well, but as far as speaking and listening goes, almost all of it faded. So when the opportunity arose to use the Rosetta Stone software, I decided to give it a shot. We’ve all seen how the country is changing demographically, and it only makes sense to learn another language as the population evolves and the world becomes more global by the day. The idea that everyone “should just learn English” is as dated as a Yakov Smirnoff routine. Trying to resist other cultures’ influence is about as effective as it would have been to resist the Industrial Revolution, and makes just as little sense. We’d be doing today’s American kids a better service if they were learning both English and Spanish in school from the beginning anyway since that’s the time people are best able to absorb it.

Of course, most foreign language classes I had taken in school consisted of a lot of repetition, conjugation and memorization. In other words, they were as boring as watching paint dry, or watching grass grow, or watching an American League baseball game. Thankfully, Rosetta Stone has turned out to be quite different.

             Instead of a lot of memorizing it’s laid out like a series of games. Kids learn their first language by hearing a word, associating it with something they see and picking it up from there, drawing from context. That’s the way this software works, as each word, phrase, action or concept is matched with a picture. You begin to form associations much faster than you did using the piles of index cards I carried around in high school and college. Of course back then I was far more interested in learning how to curse and say dirty stuff, so I won't lay all the blame on the teachers (that stuff sticks even after all these years. If I ever need to remind a Spaniard that his mother had relations with Franco's Army I can do it). Anyway, the software also blends different ideas well, teaching you colors and clothes for instance through matching words and pictures, then showing you a picture of a person walking, running or standing while it asks you which person is the one running in a red shirt. You pick up verbs, nouns and adjectives all at once, the way we do as kids.

            Other programs also do this, so I know it isn’t only Rosetta Stone, but that’s the one I’m working with so that’s the one I’m writing about. It’s made learning Spanish fun rather than a time-consuming bore, and in fact I’ve picked up quite a bit in only a few weeks, putting in about three to four hours a week. Those hours go by fast as well. It never feels like a chore.

            There’s no fear of falling behind in the class since you simply put on the headphones and go at your own pace. You speak into the headphones to work on pronunciation, you work on writing and reading too, and if you want to review something, you can without holding anyone else up.

            Am I fluent in Spanish yet? No, of course not. That takes a lot more time, and more practice. As most people who learn another language know, often the toughest part is to listen to a native speaker talk and be able to keep up. The obstacle comes from having to translate what you hear into your own language, formulate your response, translate it into you second language, and then say it. When you have to do all that with a native speaker, you often fall behind. I can do fine in a Spanish class or with my software, but put on a Spanish language TV show and they seem to be speaking so quickly it’s all a blur. Of course, they have the same problem with English. It’s all a matter of practicing until you don’t need the extra translating steps. Some words, verbs and phrases are getting there for me, and it’s kind of a thrill to be able to pick up whole sentences when hearing people speaking. During the World Series I listened to a couple of innings on the mlb.com site in Spanish. I was pleasantly surprised how much I was able to follow after only about six weeks of classes. It’s exciting when that happens, as you realize there are around 400 million more people I can communicate with than I could a few months ago.

            The word communicate is the key, of course. While fluency is still a long way away, I feel I can at least communicate. I won’t fool anyone into thinking I’ve spoken it all my life, but if I need to communicate on a basic level, I can do it. That itself is an accomplishment and feels pretty good. There are a lot of wonderful people in the world that speak languages other than English. There are good movies, songs and books as well, and I just hope to be able to absorb a little bit more of what the world has to offer.

            Maybe this will turn into a new hobby. I’d love to pick up some Japanese too. Maybe in the future this will give me the confidence to go after a totally different alphabet and grammar system. I look forward to finding out. 

Collect and Release

            Some people call it clutter, some call them knickknacks, some refer to it simply as “stuff” or affectionately as “junk.” Whatever it may be, our things tend to grab a hold on us.

            I have been watching episodes of the show “Hoarders” on Netflix. It’s a reality series that documents people who have accumulated junk and other items until their homes are completely uninhabitable. Some are filthy with rotting garbage all over, while others are just buried in their own possessions. Nearly all of them have severe emotional issues. Each seems to have endured some kind of personal tragedy that triggered their hoarding, or were raised by hoarders themselves and picked up where their parent had left off.

            But they all seemed to have lost something or lacked something (happy childhoods are rare for the people featured), and things seemed to take the place of the people or emotions that they missed. Piles of clothes will never leave you. Knickknacks won’t die and disappear from your life. When the show’s army of cleaners come in, you can see that each item they throw out - even the spoiled, soiled and useless ones – leave them feeling like they are throwing our pieces of themselves or their loved ones. What’s broken in these people can’t be fixed only by ridding their homes of old bank statements and old clothes.

            The line between collecting and hoarding can be tricky to navigate. As a kid I liked to hold on to things. Despite my love for the game, I was never a particularly big collector of baseball cards. My collecting was focused on comic books, Spider-Man comic books to be specific. I had boxes and boxes of them, which as far as I know are still calling my parents’ basement home. My room steadily shrunk as more boxes and piles of things grew in from the walls and closets. The room was still functional, and my parents certainly made me keep it sanitary, but it was crowded. Keeping the comic books made sense, but as a kid I had a hard time throwing much of anything away. I remember being amazed at my father tossing things like his old baseball gloves or other items I thought would have sentimental value but seemed to mean little to him.

            I left the comic books behind when I went away to college but I found new things to collect. Books and VHS tapes starting accumulating. I taped my favorite TV shows and didn’t erase them, and my tape collection ran into the hundreds. I held on to books as well and I lugged them around as I move to Illinois briefly, then to Indianapolis.

            It was easy to make excuses for keeping that stuff. I might want to watch the videos again. The books may be worth another read. The comic books might be worth some money, and so might the issues of Sports Illustrated I kept. When I moved into a house in Indy it was perfectly fine. We had moved from a one-bedroom apartment to a three-bedroom house. The empty spaces were awkward, and we went about filling them. Again, the house was clean and wasn’t cluttered. It just had these things stashed away.

            When my marriage broke up, I held on to most of those things. I moved to Louisville into a two-bedroom apartment, and the second bedroom became storage. It was filled with boxes of books, tapes and collectibles. For three years most of those things sat making a collection of their own – dust. Still, I didn’t throw them out. Part of it was the out of sight, out of mind thing as the boxes sat behind the closed door of that empty bedroom. Part of it was me just not wanting to get rid of things from when I lived happily with someone.

            But time passes, and eventually it was time to move again. I dreaded hauling all that stuff around again, so I did some difficult evaluating. I started with an easy one. When I started collecting TV shows on video, the concept of entire seasons of series coming out on DVD in high quality with extras just didn’t exist. Now that it does, throwing out grainy tapes of old TV shows became easy. I took hundreds of VHS tapes and sent them down the ramp into my old apartment’s trash compactor. Then something interesting happened. I thought throwing those things away would be traumatic, but instead the feeling I had was relief. I looked in another box and found a stack of books I hadn’t touched in years. I took them to Half-Price Books and got about twenty bucks or so. That felt good too, and not because the small sum of money. It felt good because the books were going back into circulation where someone else might be able to read them instead of being buried in a box, and it felt good because it created a little more space.

            After that, I had momentum on my side. I realized many of the boxes hadn’t been touched in the three years I lived in that place. Clothes and some of the furniture went to Goodwill. Other items found their way to the trash with the videotapes. When I moved, there was much less going in the truck.
            Getting rid of these things did not change anything inside of me. No memories faded just because a souvenir was no longer sitting in a box. The enjoyment I got from reading the magazines didn't go away because they were no longer sitting in a pile. What I learned from my books was not erased from my mind when I gave away or sold them. I was the same person, just one with less physical baggage to deal with. 

            Holding on to those things had not comforted me. It didn’t make things any easier for me. They didn’t reassure me, and they certainly were no substitute for being with someone who loved me. They were just things, and they were weighing me down.

            That process continued when I moved to my current place. I looked on the internet and saw that the issues of Sports Illustrated I’d collected weren’t worth that much. As it turns out, since I actually read every issue cover to cover (thus wrinkling up the pages) my issues weren’t mint condition and that’s the only way they’re worth anything at all. Even if they were in mint condition, so many copies of the magazine are printed they simply aren’t rare. Tossing those out felt good too. A second trip to Half-Price Books to clear some shelf space brought even more relief.

            I still have my Coca Cola collectibles, but I add to that collection very sparingly. I turn down knickknacks now and rarely purchase souvenirs. Instead I love to travel, see new things and meet new people. No videotape, magazine, book or trinket ever gave me as much happiness as doing something or seeing something I’d never seen or done before.

            The memories are the best things we have anyway, not the T-shirt you picked up on the way. It’s experiences I want to collect now, not stuff. 

Under My Nose

           I stood on toward the top of a set of concrete steps. From this spot I could see almost the entire thing. I had heard of it, knew it was a big deal, but had no idea as to its true scale. The cars, vans and motorhomes seemed to go on forever. And endless flow of people in various shades of green milled around. Almost every one of them seemed excited, even anxious, about what was to come.

            As I looked over the scene, I thought to myself, “How did this go on under my nose for four years?”

            I had intended to pay a visit to another annual event in Louisville last weekend – the St. James Art Fair. Hundreds of booths were lining the Old Louisville neighborhood as artists displayed their paintings, drawings, sculptures and other works. Last year I even commissioned a piece of art for the first time, so I was looking forward to seeing the artist again and thanking him. Those plans were cancelled, however, and as it turned out I witnessed a totally different city tradition.

Those of you who live in the Louisville area have probably figured out already where I was. I stood outside Papa John’s Stadium, where the University of Louisville plays its home games. I was not there for college football, however. I was there for some Friday Night Lights on a grander scale than I’d realized. I was there for the Trinity – St. Xavier game.

            This is the biggest rivalry in Kentucky football. The annual game between the two private Catholic high schools in Louisville has in fact grown to be one of the biggest games in the country. Both have won multiple state championships (Trinity in fact has won 20 of them and lost in four finals, so they are one year away from spending the equivalent of a quarter of a century playing for a championship).  They both have home stadiums with price tags in the multi-millions, enormous coaching staffs and numerous alumni in the top-level college football and even the NFL. It’s a little bit of Texas high school football dropped into the Ohio Valley.

            The schools have learned to capitalize on this, as the game has become a festival unto itself. It’s now held at Papa John’s Stadium. Bands play in tents in the parking lot, and the tailgating is simply epic. I went to the game with Ryan, a good friend of mine, who invited me to tag along with him right after he found out I had not attended before. He had made several trips and convinced me it was something I just had to see.

I was told both schools have alumni functions all week and many make the big game an excuse to take a vacation back, home. This made sense because the number of people I saw there far exceeded the student populations of the schools even if you added in their families.

            The stadium was surrounded by fans. I lived across the street from the stadium at Indiana University and I saw many game days there during my four years. I believe there were just as many cars, vans, and even motorhomes set up for this high school game as many of the Big Ten clashes I witnessed in Bloomington. The lots were absolutely full. Both teams have similar green and yellow colors, so green flags flew everywhere. The smell of burgers and brats cooked on hundreds of grills wafted through the air.

            The fans intermingled throughout the lot. Across the lot you could see footballs arcing through the air as kids played catch. People with Trinity shirts partied next door to families with St X painted on their faces, yet there was no trash talking and certainly no violence. The game was important, but hating the other side wasn’t. The students, alumni and families wanted their side to win badly, but they showed a lot of respect. It was everything a sports rivalry should be.

            The whole thing struck me as surreal as I took in the spectacle. A good friend of mine plays football in high school in Louisville. He’s the nephew of one of my best friends and I’ve been to his games. Even at the varsity level, there aren’t enough people in the stands to represent a parent for each of the players. That always struck me as profoundly sad. Those kids were practicing, working out, strapping on their pads and playing hard, and most of their parents couldn’t even be bothered to attend the games. I know some of them (and I do mean only some of them) may work nights. But really? That many work Friday nights? I’m not buying it. What could they possibly be doing that’s more important than seeing their son participate in an activity like this? They should be supporting these guys. If they have brothers and sisters, well bring them along too. High school football games are fun to watch if you’re a fan and a good social activity if you’re not. I’m not buying very many excuses when it comes to this.

            Anyway, those were not issues when it came to the St. X – Trinity game. Over 30,000 people poured into Papa John’s Stadium on a rapidly cooling evening. Ryan and I spotted seats at the 35 yard line and settled in. At the box office, we noted there were reserved seats being sold – for a high school game – but we had gotten general admission. As we sat there thousands more poured in, finding assigned seats all around us. We were prepared to be busted back to the end zone sections but we got lucky. No one came for ours.

            The game was close in the first half. The rivalry is fairly close as only a few wins separate the two schools. Trinity is ranked in the top 20 teams in the nation and St. X was going toe to toe with them. We were sitting on the Trinity side and despite the close score the fans seemed poised and confident. As it turned out, they should have been. The first half had drained St. X’s tank. The 14-6 halftime score blew up to a 41-6 Trinity rout, and by the final whistle Ryan and I were headed for the warmth of the car.

            I’m glad Ryan invited me. I got an eyeful of a massive rivalry, one that showed to me what the good side of high school football can be. I saw enthusiastic fans supporting the kids on the field and doing so with respect to the other side. It was a fine way to spend a Friday night. 

The Hits Keep On Coming (And That's Not A Good Thing)

            First, I want to thank you everyone for your patience while I was away from this blog. I’m glad to be back writing again. My first one back is sort of about sports, but is about something bigger really. Hopefully the non-sports fans out there won’t tune it out right away.

This past weekend I settled in like I always do for some football. There was the usual wide array of college games Saturday followed by the first NFL Sunday of the season. I’ve loved football since I was very little, which is no surprise for a kid growing up in South Bend, where the presence of Notre Dame turns Saturdays in the fall into special events.  Going back as far as I can remember I watched the games, going so far as to maintain my own scoreboard in the family room on a chalkboard. I kept running totals of not just the score but passes, runs and “hurts” (injuries).

The odd thing is it’s that last category that has changed the way I view the sport now. Science is just now beginning to understand the true nature of the violent hits that are such a beloved part of the NFL, which is, sad to say for a baseball nut such as me, the current national pastime.

Violence has always been a selling point for football. The battles in the trenches between the offensive and defensive lines, the hits and the willingness of the players to play with injuries were glorified for decades. Hard-hitting defenses were given nicknames like the “Steel Curtain” and “Doomsday.” NFL Films made money by putting out VHS tapes compiling the roughest and toughest hits, called “Crunch Time” that were devoured by fans anxious to see more slow-motion shots of players being separated from their senses and hearing the crunch of helmets and pads. Players were encouraged to get back out there if they saw stars after taking a big hit.

Those days seem antiquated now to me, as we are beginning to see just how much damage these men sustained for our entertainment. Studies of former players show an abnormally large percentage of these men have suffered from clinical depression, pre-Alzheimers and other serious ailments. Organizations such as the Sports Legacy Institute and the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute have been collecting the brains of dead players. Their findings have stunned the most experienced brain specialists in the country. They have found the brains of 40-year-old men riddled with Tau, a substance that destroys parts of the brain that can affect emotions and function.

NOTE: A lot of the information in this post comes from a great piece in GQ magazine written by Jeanne Marie Laskas. It's worth a read and you can find it here. It was also featured in "The Best American Sports Writing, 2010."

            The list of players suffering from mental issues and depression in their post-career lives continues to grow and grow. Dave Duerson, a member of my favorite team of all time, the 1985 Chicago Bears (known for a hard-hitting defense) committed suicide this past year and did so by shooting himself in the heart. Why the heart? Because he wanted to donate his brain to find out what the hell was wrong with him and so many others.  Boxer Roy Jones Jr. has agreed to donate his brain to a study as well.

 It is no big secret that repetitive concussions caused long-term damage. Top players such as Al Toon and Steve Young among others have been forced to retire from the NFL due to concussions years before these studies were done. The problem was that men who had not been diagnosed with full-blown concussions were suffering as well. In other words, no one was safe.

A study at the University of Oklahoma put censors in the helmets of players and found that linemen were sustaining large g-forces on their brains on every single play whether they realized it or not. Another troubling study of high school players in Indiana found the same thing. This study also gave players a test before the season began measuring their brain function. The players’ scores were noticeably lower after the season was over. After only one season. High school kids. The ones who heal faster and more completely than any age group. It only gets worse from there.

Strangely enough, the most effective solution (short of banning football, which makes way too much money for high schools, colleges, professional team owners and big media companies to ever be seriously considered) is also the most counter-intuitive.

Take the helmets away.

On the surface that may seem crazy, but what really happens is the players feel like they are wearing a suit of armor when the aforementioned studies clearly show they are not. Anyone watching football has seen players launch themselves at opponents, using their shoulder pads and helmets as weapons. The gear makes them feel invincible.

But tackling is inevitable, right? Yes it is, but it’s the technique that can be altered. Rugby involves tackling too, but there are far fewer brain injuries in rugby. Why? They don’t wear helmets. Watch a high-level rugby match and you’ll see on a tackle-by-tackle basis, they simply aren’t smashing into each other the way American football players do. In rugby they try to grab around the waist or legs and fall with the ballcarrier. They do not launch themselves at him, because…well, because that would hurt and rugby is plenty rugged enough. They tackle but they don’t hit. That’s a big difference. Sure there are huge collisions at times in rugby. It happens. But it happens in baseball once in a while too on plays at the plate or when two outfielders go for the same pop fly. But they aren’t taking huge g-force loads to the head every single play.

Will helmets be taken away? Of course not. Again, way too much money involved. Science will work to make helmets safer (a fool’s errand mostly) and the sport will try to instill penalties for helmet-to-helmet collisions that will lessen the players’ incentive to crack each other in the head (this is the most effective practical method of making the game safer because if hitting an opponent in the head hurt teams’ chances of winning it could change the way tackling is taught).

            There is a kid playing high school football this year I like a lot. He’s a good kid who loves being on his team, and I’m proud to be his friend and go to his games. But I worry about him. I want his brain to come out of this on the other side intact. I found myself for the first time last weekend wincing at big hits more than cheering them, just because I know more of how a players’ brain can bounce around in his skull even on the plays that don’t seem that rough.

            I still love football. I love the crowds, the strategies and the athleticism. I also think I would still love it if they found a way to take some of the violence out of it that is turning our heroes into troubled and damaged middle-aged people.  In fact, I might be even more proud to be a fan if they did. 

Returning soon

After a difficult month, the blog will be returning very soon. Sorry for the delays and thanks for your patience. It means a lot to me that people read and enjoy this, and I'll be back in action in the coming days.

A Small But Satisfying Milestone

            You don’t need me to tell you that people can become quite attached to their cars. I’ve never been any kind of gearhead, but I am certainly attached to mine. It’s not fancy, it’s nothing visually impressive, and I haven’t named it or refer to it as a certain gender (such as “she’s sounding good today”) but I love my car. For the most part, it’s loved me back.

            I drive a 2002 Pontiac Grand Am. I bought it new. It’s nine years old now, and on a rural road in Indiana Sunday it turned 200,000 miles. I have been behind the wheel for almost every one of them.

Hell yeah I stopped and took a pic

            When I bought it in May of 2002 it was smooth and stylish, that new car smell  making me feel like a king whenever I got in it (I don’t know what it is about that smell, but it’s one of the most satisfying scents there is). Plus, it replaced a Geo Metro, so you know I was excited to have a car that didn’t require putting a third hamster on the wheel if I wanted to get on the interstate.

            At first it was just an around-town car. I lived in Indianapolis at the time and worked in the wrestling business as a referee for a couple of local promotions. Soon, however, I would hook on with a couple of companies in the Louisville area, and that’s when my car and I really got to know each other. By making weekly and sometimes twice-weekly trips down I-65 to Louisville and back to do shows, the odometer started spinning and I began recognizing employees of the various truck stops on the way. Over the years I’ve figured I’ve made that 130-mile drive about 400 times. It got to the point I was making those drives on autopilot basically. It felt like if I got in the car and pointed it toward Louisville it would just find its way there.

            The seat molded to me. I got the seat back’s angle perfect. Passengers would be amazed how close I’d get to things when moving around parking lots, but my car and I had established trust in one another. I knew exactly where it would fit and where it wouldn’t, and exactly what turning radius I needed.  I received XM Radio as a gift and felt settled in listening to music as I made longer treks. It certainly came in handy on those long drives to Paducah (5.5 hours each way from Indy through Louisville to pick up the rest of the guys) or Madison, TN  (about 5 hours each way).

            It also gave me the feeling of happiness that only comes with sending that very last payment check in and then, a week or so later, opening an envelope to find a title stating it’s yours and yours alone.

            I’ve gotten in and out of it so many times I wore my first key down. Sliding it in and out of the lock and ignition ground it down until it would set off the theft-deterrent system because it was worried someone was trying to steal it.

Through all that, it’s been a good car. Its design has aged well. There are younger cars that look a lot more dated to me. A steady diet of oil changes and fresh air filters certainly helped keep it humming. It’s on its second fuel pump, second windshield (after a huge metal nut was shot out from under a semi’s tire and cracked it a few years ago) and fourth set of brakes. But all things considered, it’s given me precious little trouble over the years. It doesn’t even bother me that it’s too old to worry about how fast to run its fan. The air conditioner/heater is either on full blast or completely off these days, but I can live with a touch of eccentricity in my car.

            It’s also been very patient with me. I am sad to admit I’ve been behind the wheel a few times when I probably shouldn’t have.  A few times someone else has had to drive it, and it’s spent a few nights parked out in front of a bar waiting for me and my hangover to come back and retrieve it. One morning I even returned to the New View parking lot to find the words “Bite Me” next to the drawing of a cherry on the back window in red lipstick. To this day my friends and I have no explanation for that one.

            Bar parking lots have not been good to it, to be perfectly honest. It got hit hard enough once by someone to punch a hole in the back bumper. I managed to fix that myself. It still has some scratches on the trunk from when someone left a bar, looked at it and apparently thought “Hey, a black car, just what we need,” and proceeded to cut a few lines of cocaine on it with a credit card. For obvious reasons, it was very happy when I decided to drastically cut down on my drinking.

            The best thing I can say about my car is that I still look forward to a long road trip in it. It has a good history. It has heard a lot of laughter on the road with its seats full of wrestlers headed off to shows, and heard plenty of talk of trades, batting orders and pitching rotations on rides to Cincinnati to see the Cubs play. It has rolled through the Smoky Mountains, down through Georgia to Florida without complaint and has endured ice storms, snows and torrential rain. It shrugged that off like a good Midwesterner should.

            It may not be brand new and may not be as pretty as it used to be, but I’m going to drive that car as long as it lets me. We've driven the equivalent of eight trips around the equator together. We trust each other, we know each other, and that driver-side seat is still the most comfortable one I know of. 

Time

            Whoever you may be as you read this, you don’t need me to tell you that priorities can change in an instant. I thought the biggest worry I’d have this week was trying to find a new job in what is still a fairly lousy job market. As it turns out, that wasn’t close to correct.

For the first time, I filed for unemployment Monday. Friday had gone quietly as had the rest of my last week at work. Several people said goodbye, and some seemed to avoid me, like being laid off was communicable. I packed up my stuff from my desk. I didn’t have much, just a picture of my nephew, a couple of knick knacks some thank you cards a few members of my crew had given me.

            I walked out the door, across the street and out to the parking lot feeling empty. I had done an exit meeting that Tuesday, which gave me the documents I’d need to file for unemployment, which I could do Monday. I saw those sitting on the passenger seat and tried not to think about it too much. I did my usual trip to Barnes and Noble, read my usual magazines, drank my usual summertime iced coffee order, looked at the usual history, biography and sports sections of the store and headed home a few hours later. I did my best to make it a normal weekend.

            Monday morning I checked my email, saw no messages from prospective employers but no rejection messages either, and headed to the WorkOne office. They had me fill out a two-sided form that reminded me of when you visit a new doctor or dentist. I gave them all the vital info as well and gory details of why I was there. After that it operated a lot like a license branch. A number was called and I approached a woman sitting at a computer, who typed in my information, gave me a card with a few websites listed on it as well as a couple of brochures about their work training programs.

            After that she sent me to a desk lined with computers where I could officially file. It took about fifteen minutes, and they had a couple of very friendly people walking around helping out the folks who had any trouble. I have to admit, from what I saw they ran a pretty efficient office there.

The woman assisting the applicants told me I’d have to apply for three jobs a week or do job searches a few times a week, and that looking anywhere in the United States was acceptable. I knew that would be no problem whatsoever.  I’d already compiled a list of places from careerbuilder in a couple of different states.

            She said it would be a couple of weeks before I knew how the claim came out, meaning I would have no idea how much my maximum or weekly benefits would be. I’ll have to spend the next couple of weeks in the dark budget-wise. I finished filling it out and thanked them. As I walked back to my car I tried to think of what I could do the rest of the day. I felt lost, and I hated the feeling.

            I went to the public library, but the sign on the door said they were temporarily closed due to sewage issues. I take sewage issues fairly seriously so I headed on home. I scoured some sites again, saved a few jobs in Texas that looked promising, and otherwise allowed myself an some time to lay around and feel sorry for myself.

            More resumes were sent out Tuesday, and more waiting ensued. Each day is a cycle of searching, applying, and waiting for my phone to light up, or a (1) to appear in my email inbox that will being interested from someone. I fiddle with cover letters, nitpick my resume, and hope.

            In the meantime, I tried to write, I tried to see friends, I tried to get to the gym. I continue to try to live my life normally and I try extremely hard not to take all this personally. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I don’t.

            On Wednesday morning, my phone did light up. It was my mom, who was traveling with my stepfather in Michigan, visiting good friends. As it turned out, my stepfather had run into some health issues and was going to be in the hospital a few days. He was all right. The doctors knew what was wrong and how to treat it, and things were already looking better by the time mom got hold of me. I thanked her for letting me know what was happening and asked her to keep me updated.

            My stepfather is the best man I know. Hearing he was experiencing more health problems made me pause. I sat outside on my balcony and thought for a while. He’s my rock, the person I turn to when I need advice. Every day I struggle, every day I can’t find a new job, every time I come up short when it comes to relationships or otherwise in day to day life, I feel like I’m disappointing him. I can’t stand that thought, but I feel it every day.

So I’m grateful to the doctors for taking good care of him, because I need him. My mom, his wife of 27 years, needs him. My sister and my nephew need him. His kids and grandchildren from his first marriage need him. My stepfather is a tough man. I feel confident he’ll be all right and keep on going, because that’s what he does.

As for me, I need that time. I need that time to get back on track and make him proud of me again. Somehow. Some way.

We all just need some time.

Dear Experts: Quiet Please, I'm Watching the Game

            Nearly a full year has passed since I moved to Southern Indiana. I decided to do so without the benefit of satellite TV or cable in my new place. Originally, this decision was met with skepticism. Most people who knew me said I wouldn’t last a month or two without it. Their lack of confidence usually centered around my inability to exist without my sports channels.

            This was a valid point. I knew that between Hulu.com and Netflix I could see just about everything I wanted to as far as TV series went, but I am (and most likely always will be) a sports nut. So how would I do without the ESPN channels, Comcast Sports Chicago, MLB TV, Versus and the 30 or so other regular stops on my Directv settings? After all, I watched SportsCenter almost daily, TiVo’d “Pardon the Interruption” and spent hours watching whatever they wanted to put on the MLB network.

            Almost a year later, I have to say I am still functioning. I have shown no major withdrawal symptoms and am in fact leading a normal life. In fact, I enjoy sports more now than I did before, and in a quarter of the time. Let me explain.

            Seeing live sports on the internet is fairly easy. ESPN3.com shows live events from the ESPN networks and a lot of events that don’t make TV. The rest I can find other places on the web. I do pay for the MLB and NBA online packages to watch games, but those add up to a grand total of three months or so of Directv, so over the course of a year I come out way ahead. Soccer can be picked up in about a hundred places, as can the NFL. Seeing games and events live is just as easy as it was when I had the satellite.

            So where do I save all this time and still enjoy sports more? By only watching live events, I’ve saved my ears hours of battering from all the chatter.

            It wasn’t until I was away from these channels for a while that I really noticed it. I’d say it was about halfway through the NFL season last year. I remember being in my gym, which has TVs scattered around the walls, with the TV in the free weight area always tuned to ESPN. I looked up and saw one of the many editions of SportsCenter on it. The TV was on mute but as ESPN viewers know you can follow the stories with the crawls and side-of-the-screen graphics ESPN seems to love so much. The big topic today was Player X on Team X had  “called out” his teammates by saying they weren’t playing hard enough. This came from one sentence the player had said during one interview after one game. ESPN decided this Shakespearean moment of betrayal necessitated an entire segment and three “experts” to fully grasp the enormity of the situation. The experts discussed whether player X had “lost his teammates” and whether player X should be traded, and where the team would go from there (and I could tell even on mute since the graphics read, in turn “HAS X LOST HIS TEAMMATES?” “SHOULD PLAYER X BE TRADED?” and “WHERE DOES TEAM X GO FROM HERE?”).

            Why am I calling the player X and referring to the team as Team X? Because I don’t have the slightest hope of remembering which player on which team caused this moment of panic in the ESPN studios. Because, as you may have already guessed, in the grand scheme of the season, absolutely none of this mattered. The team didn’t collapse, the other players on the team didn’t even bother to comment as they knew this was a flippant response right after a frustrating loss, and it didn’t actually mean anything. Another reason is that ESPN does this type of overkill coverage of meaningless stuff all the time, and after a while these alleged “turning point” moments all blend together and proceed to travel in one ear and swiftly out the other.

            Still, SportsCenter has hours of programming time to fill, and as I watched the side scroll (which lists the topics coming up that will be discussed) I realized just how much pure fluff goes into sports coverage on TV. It’s hours and hours of “experts” speculating endlessly and making meaningless predictions. None of these people are held remotely accountable for what they say. They contradict themselves day to day without anyone questioning them about it. Their constant predictions are not accompanied by any data on how their past predictions have fared (and believe me they all could have data a mile long if they wanted it since “who will win the X division in X sport” is one of their go-to time wasters).  In fact, so much chatter goes by so quickly it’s almost impossible for a viewer to keep track of it all, which may in fact be the point. It’s simply distraction from the fact that they don’t have enough real show to last an hour, and if they admitted that, well then you wouldn’t be around to watch the ads.

            I’m dubious about the quality of these predictions and analysis anyway, mostly because it’s given by a parade of suit-clad ex-coaches who were fired for not knowing enough about how to win in their particular sport in the first place, or retiree coaches and players picking up a paycheck for tossing out a couple of clichés a few times a week. Their televised shouting matches that pass for pregame shows or expert commentary mean nothing. It’s all just air. And I find I enjoy sports without these bozos clogging up my ear canals.

            I still catch some of these shows when visiting home or a friend’s place and it’s remarkable how often I’ll see them making dire predictions and speaking of how someone has lost their touch or how one victory or loss by a certain team means an entire division will be in upheaval and say to myself, “they’re calling that a big deal?”

            By only watching the live events and reading the occasional wrap from the Chicago Tribune site, I simply enjoy what’s happening on the field of play. I’m not bogged down with phony outrage or mindless speculation. I just watch what’s happening and if something strikes me, I form my own opinion about it. Sports are supposed to be fun, and the “paralysis by analysis” style of “breaking down” (another irritating sports phrase) the minutiae was taking some of that away from me. I just didn’t realize it until I removed myself from it.  

            It has also added hours to my weeks as I don’t spend time sifting through these shows. I’ve read more books and done more writing (it’s funny to me how often early drafts of blog posts are written in the evening hours when I’d usually be watching SportsCenter and PTI). I’d call that’s a pretty good trade-off.

            So sports fans, give it a try sometime. Skip the pregame and postgame shows and hang out with a friend, read a book or listen to some good music. You’d be surprised how much more enjoyable the actual games can be. 

Summer Reading - When I Can Concentrate Anyway

            Things have been pretty heavy on this blog lately, with posts about my eye and my impending layoff. I thought I’d keep it a little lighter today.

It took me a little longer than usual to get through “The Economist” this past weekend at the bookstore. Apparently it was “Take Your Screaming Toddler to Barnes & Noble” night. I had no idea. That, combined with a guy in the cafe with an abnormally booming voice made it a little difficult. I don’t want to complain too much as it’s a coffee shop and not a library, so it’s fine to talk, but it was weird. When the guy left the rest of us actually exchanged looks and raised eyebrows. He wasn’t raising his voice or anything, the sucker just carried.

            It’s normally fairly quiet in there. People peck away at research papers and dissertations on laptops, others play chess, groups of teens sit together at a table and…well, they just seem to text more than anything else. Many times the whirring of the cappuccino machine is about the only sound. Oh well, the appearance of a few loud kids wasn’t about to deter me.

            Anyway, I have managed to knock a few things off my reading list lately so I thought I’d share.

        

          “Dethroning the King”: I came across this one in the business section, but it turned out to be a story of a father and son whose dysfunctional relationship and clashing personalities led to the unthinkable – the venerable American icon Anheuser-Busch company being sold to Brazilian brewing giant InBev.

            The father is August Busch III, who pushed is own father out of the top spot and proceeded to make Budwesier not just part of the fabric of St. Louis but also the dominant beer in the country. He also trusted absolutely no one, and created a free-spending and insular culture at Anheuser-Busch that made it vulnerable when the beer business began thinking globally.

            Eventually, August III reluctantly hands the reigns over to his son, August IV (known either affectionately or derisively as The Fourth) and then spends the next year and a half undermining him.  The culture clashes between the tightfisted policies of InBev and the open-checkbook style of operating used by Anheuser-Busch (August III flew his own helicopter to work every day) make for interesting reading. The story of how a hapless August IV tried to keep his father from pulling the rug from under him, but never really mustering up the will to get in the trenches of boardroom warfare show how the apple can sometimes roll very far away from the tree indeed.

            What struck me was how close the company came to heading off InBev at the pass. Anheuser-Busch’s flirtation with Modelo (the makers of both Corona and Modelo beers) would have saved the company, but the castle walls had been built too high to see daylight. Soon after, InBev stormed the gates and one of the great American companies was sold.

            This book isn’t as salacious as James B. Stewart’s “DisneyWar,” but it is an interesting story of how an American icon can fall, and just how fast it can all happen.

“Moneyball”: You don’t have to be a baseball fan to enjoy this book, which a movie studio is betting on as they’re doing a film version of it starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. I saw a trailer for the movie and it made me want to go back and read the book again.  Baseball is the setting for this non-fiction book by Michael Lewis, who has written some of the more engaging business books of the past few years. Lewis has a talent for taking the complicated numbers of baseball and the business world and making them more understandable. It’s less about baseball than a story of a maverick thinker who bucks decades of tradition. Moneyball focuses on Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane, who built a low-budget major league team that won by turning the conventions of baseball on its ear.

Beane didn’t invent the system, which he readily admits. That evolved from the sabremetrics movement led by Bill James, but Beane was the first to put it into practice in the majors. The force of Beane’s personality is entertaining too, as he comes off as a smart but annoyingly smug guy, always supremely confident that he is the smartest man in the room. Beane even has a fatalistic complex about himself as the poor tortured artist whose work is unappreciated. Still, his theories on why traditional baseball scouting and stats are inherently flawed, and what he did to ignore a century’s worth of conventional wisdom and succeed is an intriguing story.  

           

            “Front Porch Prophet”: This novel by Raymond Atkins tells the story of two friends in a sleepy Georgia town whose lives are altered in quick succession. A.J. finds himself unemployed, while his best friend Eugene finds out he’s dying. While it sounds like the setting of a tragedy, this book is actually very funny. Atkins writes in a breezy style, using narrative flashbacks to flesh out his characters, all of which have more depth than you anticipate at the beginning. These are generally likeable people going through some hard times with a sense of humor and a strong will. It certainly made me laugh more than just about any book I’ve read in the last couple of years, and that humor makes the difficulties the characters experience all the more heartfelt.

            This is a strong first effort at a full-length novel from Atkins, who writes a humor column for a few regional publications in the South. I look forward to reading more of his work.

“Dead or Alive”: This is one of two Tom Clancy novels that have popped out in the last few months. It’s a bit of a surprise as Clancy hadn’t written a fiction book since 2003’s disappointing “Teeth of the Tiger” Both of these new books have co-authors, with “Dead or Alive” listing Grant Blackwood as Clancy’s collaborator. I don’t know how much was actually written by Clancy and how much was Blackwood’s work, but it’s a good story using the same characters that made Clancy a brand name  (he got his start with “Hunt For Red October,” then went on a run with these characters that included “Patriot Games,” “Clear and Present Danger,” “Sum of All Fears,” “Debt of Honor,” and “Executive Orders” before the quality began to tail off). This book is better than his last couple of efforts, and follows a former president, his son (now a spy) and a network of top-level operatives as they attempt to thwart a series of simultaneous terrorist attacks.

            Clancy can still plot out a solid political thriller and this one is a worthy successor to his earlier books. I breezed through this one and enjoyed it a lot. It’s good to have Clancy back. 

Moneyball trailer

The Other Shoe Drops

            It really wasn’t a surprise. There had been rumors for a while it was coming. The only thing that moves fast around a government operation is the gossip. Every decision comes wrapped in a bow of thick red tape, so you tend to see the big changes coming. Still, it’s never easy to sit in a room and be told your services are no longer required.

            While the Constitution requires a census every ten years to count heads in the United States, the Census Bureau operates all year every year, doing other surveys that lead to economic indicators and other statistical tasks. The Bureau swells its ranks to do the decennial census, which obviously is an enormous undertaking, but after it wraps up they end up with a surplus of employees. Over the last few months hundreds, maybe even more than a thousand (I don’t know the exact number and the Bureau does not exactly post it on their website) have been given their papers from the Bureau showing them the door.

            Mine came Monday. I was called into a room and told my last day would be July 29^th. I was told it was strictly a numbers game. There was less work coming into the place as a whole, President Obama was cutting the budget, and people had to go.

            I was also told it wasn’t based on merit. That, I had no problem believing. The Census Bureau is a union shop, and like almost all labor unions in this country the AFGE exists almost exclusively to make sure the least productive and least competent held onto their jobs with a vice-like grip. So when cuts happen, they happen based on seniority, not on ability. A useless employee who has been there five years will stay over a tireless worker who has been there for four years and 11 months. That’s the way it goes.

            I only had two years in, so when they took a machete to the payroll lists, mine was one of the names lopped off. So starting after July 29 I will no longer have a job. I’ll be eligible for unemployment, which will help a little bit, but I’ll still be back out there job-searching.

            Those of you who have been in this position know how stressful it can be. The job market in the Louisville area is not heading any lists of America’s best. It’s a seemingly endless cycle of searching through job sites, sending out resumes, customizing cover letters, then hearing the eerie silence of rejection over and over. These websites create convenience, but they also create a disconnect between the companies and the people looking for work. Many don’t even provide a phone number, just an email address or simply a “click here to apply” button. They don’t have to say no, in fact they don’t have to say anything. They can simply ignore you. Many jobs are posted only because company policy tells them they must yet they already have an internal candidate in mind. I wish those came with an asterisk, but that is hardly realistic, so good jobs are dangled in front of you and you apply, unaware you’re doing the job hunt version of running toward a mirage in the desert.

            I really struggle with this process. I try not to take it personally, I really do. Still, it can make me feel unwanted, or even worse, stupid. I over-analyze my resume and poor over my cover letters wondering what I’m doing wrong. Each time I check my phone to see no missed calls and no voicemails I feel a little worse about myself. Each fruitless trip to my email inbox makes my heart sink a bit. Each feeling of hope taken from an interview fades slowly as I wait for news that often never comes.

             I know I don’t want to work in Louisville. That’s why I moved across the river to Indiana in the first place. I don’t want to deal with the bridges and spaghetti junction traffic and everything else, so after a lot of thinking I’ve decided to expand my search far beyond this area. Perhaps I’ve worn out my welcome here. Actually, I may have worn it out quite a long time ago and only now realize it. So I’ll continue to look around southern Indiana, which I like quite a bit, but I feel it’s also time to look elsewhere.

            I have family in Austin, Texas, which is a thriving city with a vibrant culture that seems to be a good fit for me. I’ll look there. I’ll take a look at Indianapolis again, a city I miss far more than I anticipated I would. I’ll look at Orlando, where the market is tougher but a place where some of my oldest and best friends are and where my parents visit often. Both Austin and Indianapolis were on a recent list of cities with good job markets and relatively low costs of living. That was encouraging.

            I’m sure other areas will come up with during my search. It’s a strange thing. The last time I knew I was going to be moving without knowing where was when I was leaving Bloomington preparing to graduate from college. That was a long time ago. Ever since then I’ve had a destination, but this time it’s a blank slate in front of me. Maybe I'll find something down here and I'll stay. More likely, I won't. 

I’ll look around. I’ll take some chances. I’ll listen to suggestions. I'm keeping my mind open to almost anything.

And I will try very hard not to take it personally.